RvB's After Images: Vampire's Kiss

"No tears for the creatures of the night! My eyes are dry!" -- the lyrics are from the San Francisco new-wave group Tuxedomoon. That song just might be their answer record to the much more popular "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus. The new-wave tune sums up the less-than-remembered 1989 black comedy Vampire's Kiss. Above we see Nicolas Cage as one Peter Loew, having his manly essence drained by a red-lipped, steel-thighed Jennifer Beals, known to posterity as "that Flashdance chick." The actor's current career, just lamented by Cinematical's Patrick Walsh, can make us forget how Cage was the once the go-to man for really berserk cinema, the same way that Johnny Depp is now.

Rumors started about him. We heard Cage had several teeth removed to be in Birdy, for instance. Not true, according to this NPR interview, Cage had just had some dental work done and decided to use it for his character in Birdy, which was incidentally the Reign Over Me of 1984. However, it is true he ate a bug on screen once, and that happens right here.